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"Of course, that's possible."
Ikki rubbed his slightly itchy nose as he said it. He was no longer worried that Kalifa's body might be seen by a Grimmjow who could somehow still be conscious inside his own Zanpakuto, so naturally none of them tried to stop Kalifa from doing what she was doing now.
Kalifa took the answer as permission and said nothing more. After drinking the Grade A nutritional life potion in her hand, she walked over to the nearby fitness equipment and began her second round of weightlifting.
"What? You're shameless." Perona stared at Kalifa exercising without a coat and pouted.
"Didn't you train like this before? They didn't even look at the clothes underneath," Ikki said, turning to Perona with obvious interest.
"That, that's different. You weren't around to see it before."
Perona blushed and raised her voice at Ikki, then looked at Belo Betty with pure resentment. If it hadn't been for Belo Betty's suggestion earlier, she would never have shown such an embarrassing scene in front of Ikki.
"Hehe, don't look at me like that. I only made the suggestion. Whether you actually did it was up to you," Belo Betty said, raising her hands in mock surrender.
Perona opened her mouth, but ultimately couldn't find a response. Belo Betty was right. She had only offered the one suggestion. After all, the gym was full of women, and everyone sweated heavily during exercise. Under those circumstances, Perona had no real objection to taking her clothes off to train. Once she saw Belo Betty and the others set their clothes aside to work out, she had simply blended in.
But that had all been on the assumption that Ikki wasn't there. Who would have thought that Ikki, who had been at Marine Headquarters only a second before, would suddenly appear in the gym the very next moment. If she could, Perona would have gone back a few minutes and stopped her past self right before she started undressing.
"Viola, this is yours. Practice diligently and grow stronger."
At that moment, Ikki took out the last bottle of nutritional life potion he had on hand and passed it to Viola.
"Do... do you still have some left?" Viola asked in surprise.
"Yes, of course you get a share too. Your strength has grown considerably since you joined us, but there's still a gap between you and the true powerhouses. Hopefully this bottle will help you take another step forward," Ikki said, nodding.
At the moment, only a handful of people in the entire crew still hadn't reached S-level physical strength, among them Ginrummy, Viola, Perona, and Kalifa. Ikki intended to build a crew where everyone was a powerhouse, and he had no intention of standing by and letting any of them fall behind.
"Thank you, Captain Ikki. I'll begin my training now."
Viola uncapped the bottle and drank the potion down in one gulp. Then she quickly stripped off all her clothes and set them aside.
"Wh, what are you doing, Viola?" Perona stared wide eyed at Viola's body.
"Exercising, of course."
Did exercising really require this? Perona wondered.
"After taking a nutritional life potion, you sweat a lot when you exercise."
"Wait, hold on."
Perona's lips twitched. The words sounded oddly familiar. She glanced at Kalifa, and yes, someone had already said almost exactly that. Somehow it wasn't surprising at all.
"Don't you know anything about shame? At least Kalifa kept her underclothes on. You don't even have a single piece of clothing left. Is that even acceptable? I ask you, what kind of princess behaves like this?" Perona stomped her foot, glaring at Viola in utter disappointment.
"Hehe, Captain Ikki isn't some outsider. It's fine to let him look. Besides, weren't you seen by him too? Isn't your reaction a little strange, Perona?"
Viola settled the barbell across her shoulders and began a steady rhythm of squats. Between the effects of the potion and the fact that she had chosen a weight right at her limit, it wasn't long before her body was glistening with sweat.
Ikki's gaze followed her, drifting up and down without meaning to, drawn by the sheer range of motion in her workout. He found his eyes catching the movement of her chest with every rise and fall, more pronounced than he expected.
'As expected, Viola really does have a great figure,' he thought. No wonder her dancing was always so captivating.
Ikki sighed inwardly.
"Me? Strange?" Perona pointed at herself and looked at Belo Betty, Ginrummy, and the others with a puzzled expression. They all nodded in agreement, Ginrummy most enthusiastically of all.
Following Viola's example, Ginrummy had already joined the ranks of the enthusiastically undressed, adopting the exact same routine. By now she too had returned to the state she'd been in when she first arrived in this world.
"You two." Perona turned to Kalifa, who was working her biceps with a set of dumbbells. "Kalifa, aren't you going to say something to them?"
The next moment, Perona's eyes went wide as she stared at Kalifa in astonishment.
"Say something about what?" Kalifa asked, continuing her workout with a puzzled look.
"About their clothes, obviously. Wait, what happened to your clothes?" Perona's mouth fell open. "Didn't you say before that you wouldn't take everything off?"
"I did take it off."
"Then why put it back on?"
"Because I'd sweated too much."
"Then why not take it off now?"
"Because Ikki is here."
"Captain Ikki isn't a bad person, you know."
As she spoke, Kalifa set the dumbbells back on their rack and walked over to a stationary bike, starting a high intensity ride.
"Perona, are you feeling unwell?" Kalifa asked between pedal strokes, sounding genuinely puzzled by such a self evident question.
Am I sick? Perona pointed at herself and glanced around at the other women in the gym. The look she got back was nearly identical to the ones Kalifa and Viola had already given her.
"Am I really the sick one here? Am I supposed to just ignore everything when I'm around Ikki?" Perona muttered to herself, stealing a glance in his direction.
Ikki caught her looking and gave her a smile and a nod.
"No, no, there's definitely something wrong with this," Perona said, holding her head in her hands and shaking it. "I don't want to exercise naked in front of that guy."
Plenty of the gym's equipment required large, exposing movements. Machines like the leg curl were the obvious example. If she used one of those without wearing anything, wouldn't Ikki be able to see straight up between her legs?
Several other machines carried the same risk. And that wasn't even counting Viola, who was still right in front of everyone, barbell across her shoulders, squatting again and again for Ikki to watch. Perona had no desire to put on a performance like that herself, a heart pounding display right in front of him.
Just imagining it made her face go red. She spun around and bolted straight for the bathhouse connected to the gym, her thoughts a complete mess. She needed a proper dose of cold water to clear her head.
What she didn't realize was that the moment she shut the door behind her, the whole gym burst into cheerful laughter.